The Daniel Mendelsohn article a few weeks ago in The New Yorker about his response to the writing of Mary Renault as a gay pre-teen and teen. It’s a beautifully evoked memoir, and in its shape and beauty and coherence, it stood in marked contrast to another magazine memoir published in New York magazine that same week: Elizabeth (Prozac Nation) Wertzel self-pitying, delusional and nearly incomprehensible mid-life memoir. If we were batting this around at a (real) dinner party, someone at the table would have wondered why Adam Moss, the finest magazine editor in the city, had chosen to run it. Someone else would have replied: because people will read it! Sad but true. –joe nocera